Meeting, training session, mission, meeting, Polaris looked at her schedule and sighed. When she signed on to lead Serval's X-Factor, she expected a lot more action than hours of boring talks and business deals gave her.
She paused to count her blessings. She had a good team set up here, an excuse to spend time with her half-brother Quicksilver, and a chance to prove her value when nobody else wanted to give her a break. At least, not since her father Magneto recruited her for Genosha, and that went... well... she didn't want to think about it.
She zipped up her bodysuit, slipped on her yellow-tinted glasses, picked up the relevant paperwork and headed out. She smiled and waved as she passed Serval employees down the hallway, each of their names firmly memorized like a steel trap. Turning a corner, she grabbed the handle to the main meeting room, pulled the door open, stepped inside and extended her hand to the finely dressed business man in her line of sight.
"Hello, I'm Lorna Dane. I'm here-"
Before the man could shake her hand, everything changed. The door behind her shrank, for starters, then changed from glass to wood. The table in the middle of the room disappeared, replaced by stairs leading to a second floor. A woman emerged from what she could clearly see was the dining room, and that's when Lorna pulled her hand back, waved and said four words she never expected to come out of her mouth.
"... for the babysitting job!"
"You're late," the man reprimanded. "I was told I could expect better from students of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning."
Polaris blinked and looked down. This wasn't right at all. Just a minute ago, she'd been in team uniform, ready for a day's worth of business busywork. Now, she was standing in front of this man dressed like a schoolgirl - a slutty one at that. A skull necklace hung above her very generous cleavage, put on display by a shirt tied into a knot halfway up her torso. The skirt wasn't any better, short enough for a slight breeze to show off her panties. Assuming she wore any. The heavy bookbag slung over her shoulder completed the package.
Wait, this is fucked up, is what she thought.
"I-I'm sorry, I saw this really hot boy," is what she said. "Like, Edward Cullen hot."
Ugh. From the sound of it, her whole outward attitude had changed to fit this slutty teenage schoolgirl stereotype. Except she wasn't a teenager. Her height, build, musculature, everything about her body looked far more mature than the average teen. Then the man confirmed it.
"Look, I realize you're only a freshman, but you're also 27 years old. I expect someone your age to know better. That's why we chose you for this over your peers."
"It won't happen again, promise. But umm... is it okay for me to call my tutor over?"
"I don't see why not," the elegant woman said. "Who did you want to invite?"
"Hope," Lorna answered.
"Hope Summers?"
For once, Lorna's embarrassed blush matched the way she felt. "Hope Abbott."
"Ah yes, her. She's a fine choice. You're learning from the best."
Somehow, Lorna knew that, which made admitting it all the more humiliating. Inwardly, she loathed the idea of sitting across from Hope at a table, reading flash cards and answering pop quiz questions, blundering through all of them while Hope passed each test with flying colors. She hated the thought of sitting in one of those small wooden desks among students more than half her age, getting shown up by each and every one of them. The shame of going back to school and getting treated like a clueless teenage girl, only to prove she deserved to be there, grated on her nerves.
Outwardly, she grinned. "Hope's awesome, and super smart. I really wanna be smart like her some day."
"Keep at it and it just might happen," the woman complimented. Or condescended. Lorna couldn't tell anymore. The line between her memory of life as the leader of X-Factor and this new one as a bottom of the rung 27-year-old freshman blurred with each passing second.
"I guess we should get going. We're already late," the man said. "The children are already in bed. You can have ice cream in the fridge, but no boys. Got it?"
"Got it."
As the parents left, Polaris patted down her skirt, dug into her bookbag and grabbed her cell phone.
Next Chapters
Or add your own